Virtual (So?)

   Lonely, I'm Mr. Lonely.  Some of you may be old enough to remember Bobby Vinton (who wrote and sang that song but should not to be confused with Bobby Darin of "Mack the Knife" fame), a tenor along the lines of Justin Timberlake but not the almost soprano-like voice of Frankie Valli.  Still alive today, Bobby Vinton had quite the life: a chaplain in the Army, a player of a variety of instruments, a composer proud of his Polish heritage, and a grounded benefactor (when his local town wanted to erect a statue in his honor, he denied the offer and told them to spend the $100,000 on helping other causes in need).  It would seem that he was anything but lonely.  Which brings me to Alexa, that automated voice which joins Siri and Google's Assistant and answers just about anything from homework questions to the weather conditions in some distant land...Alexa, come to find out, also received over 1,000,000 marriage proposals in 2017 (Google and Apple haven't released their figures).  Alexa's standard rejection to such offers: We're at pretty different places in our lives.  Literally.  I mean, you're on Earth and I'm in the cloud.

    Alexa and the rest are always on and listening, the big companies defending that by saying that the Echo Dots and such have to be on to hear the "trigger" word that awakens them but that none of the information is stored until a request is made; but sometimes this activation happens accidentally said a piece in The Atlantic, say when the machine hears Texas or A Lexus (Amazon is working to correct the problem but one can imagine a teen saying a bit sarcastically "SIRI-ously" and having Apple's assistant "awaken" and begin recording).  Said the piece: According to a 2018 report by National Public Radio and Edison Research, 8 million Americans own three or more smart speakers, suggesting that they feel the need to always have one within earshot.  By 2021, according to another research firm, Ovum, there will be almost as many voice-activated assistants on the planet as people.  It took about 30 years for mobile phones to outnumber humans.  Alexa and her ilk may get there in less than half that time...Alexa alone already works with more than 20,000 smart-home devices representing more than 3,500 brands.  Her voice emanates from more than 100 third-party gadgets, including headphones, security systems, and automobiles.  But this is all old news since many new parents already have Mattel's voice-recognition Barbie which talks in response to your child's words...but wait, there's a newer holographic Barbie that does visually whatever your child requests (to a limit), as shown in a quick demo from WIRED.  Might this be where Alexa and Siri and the rest are headed (with virtual Barbie you can choose the race you wish her to be, similar to changing what voice, gender and accent you wish to hear with the other electronic assistants)

   A bit more disturbing result which is resulting from all of this vocal input to an electronic object is that many people are confiding to such devices more about themselves than they would to an actual human, say to a friend or a spouse or parent.  Continues the article: Why would we turn to computers for solace?  Machines give us a way to reveal shameful feelings without feeling shame.  When talking to one, people “engage in less of what’s called impression management, so they reveal more intimate things about themselves,” says Jonathan Gratch, a computer scientist and psychologist at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, who studies the spoken and unspoken psychodynamics of the human-computer interaction.  “They’ll show more sadness, for example, if they’re depressed...I asked tech executives about this, and they said they try to deal with such statements responsibly.  For instance, if you tell Alexa you’re feeling depressed, she has been programmed to say, “I’m so sorry you are feeling that way.  Please know that you’re not alone.  There are people who can help you.  You could try talking with a friend, or your doctor.  You can also reach out to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance at 1-800-826-3632 for more resources."

   Another piece in the same magazine wrote a different view, that of the independence the devices are creating, especially for those with disabilities or even early dementia.  Said author Ian Bogost in his essay, writing about his blind and aging father (now with an Echo Dot): It doesn’t really matter whether Alexa provides Dad with useful knowledge or a seamless way to communicate.  It does something more fundamental: It allows him to connect with people and ideas in a contemporary way.  To live fully means more than sensing with the eyes and ears -- it also means engaging with the technologies of the moment, and seeing the world through the triumphs and failures they uniquely offer...”  For his aging father, the device provides a freedom of obtaining information without fumbling through channels or keys or buttons: Read me a story in Italian about lovers meeting on a bridge during the war...

   Two patterns appear to be emerging here, one of the growing use and/or need for this alternate reality and another of where it might be taking us (and are we willingly going down that path?)  The Week wrote: Social science researchers define loneliness as the emotional state created when people have fewer social contacts and meaningful relationships than they would like -- relationships that make them feel known and understood.  Essentially, if you feel lonely, you are lonely.  One out of two Americans now falls into this category.  In a recent study of 20,000 people by the health insurance company Cigna, about 47 percent of respondents reported often feeling alone or left out.  Thirteen percent said there were zero people who knew them well..."During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes," said former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.  "It was loneliness."...Between 1985 and 2009, the average American's social network shrank by more than one-third, defined by the number of close confidants...About 1 in 11 Americans age 50 or older doesn't have a spouse, romantic partner, or living child...One in six Boomers lives alone...Surprisingly, young people are actually most at risk of being lonely in modern society.  In the Cigna study, Generation Z members ages 18 to 22 and Millennials ages 23 to 37 scored the highest for loneliness...In one study of Americans ages 19 to 32, the top 25 percent of social media users were twice as likely to report feeling lonely as the people using it least.

   Could some of this be stemming from aging, or forgetfulness, or financial problems, or work demands?  Probably yes to all of those, and more.  In the past 15 years, bankrupcy filings have tripled for those 65 and older in the U.S. said the New York Times.  In Japan a word has been created to signal too much work...Karōshi (workers committing suicide from too much work is far from an isolated problem, said Business Insider).  Again in the U.S., middle-aged white males killed themselves (over half by handguns) 3.5+% more than any other segment, adding to the 1.3 million deaths by such a method in 2017.*  Sometimes the thoughts are not quite so desperate as to end one's life but yet remain hidden despite them being in a grounded relationship (a cute and overlooked movie showing a bit of this was At Middleton which starred Vera Farmiga & Andy Garcia); as the movie depicted you can be lonely even if successful and surrounded by a loving family and friends.  But what if, as with Her and Marjorie Prime, those alternate realities --even the ones you might create with a device such as Alexa or Siri-- are very real to you; who should be the one to decide whether you keep or dissolve that part of you?

   This was one of the questions posed in a detailed look at how different institutions are tackling people with dementia, even posting fake bus stops signs and store fronts (however in one Danish facility, the "stores" are very real and residents shop for groceries and often enjoy meals cooked by an aide in their own rooms; there are no "lock down" doors inside as residents sit outside and enjoy the different, albeit created and catered to, "life styles").  The article came from The New Yorker and for anyone dealing with a friend or relative with dementia, proves quite thought provoking, even bringing up issues such as is there a point where the truth-is-harmful theory contrasts with how-much-lying-is-too-much theory.  Said author Larissa MacFarquhar: Until recently, for instance, it was thought that telling the truth about a fatal illness was pointless and cruel.  The Hippocratic oath said nothing about lying -- it only proscribed doctors from doing harm.  And what was harmful if not delivering a death sentence and destroying hope?  Lying to most patients in this way now seems obviously wrong; but when it comes to people with dementia there is no consensus.  To lie is to violate the respect that one person owes another; but lying to a person with dementia can protect them from awful truths that they have no power to alter.  If a woman asks for her husband, having forgotten that he is dead, should you tell her the truth and cause her terrible grief, knowing that this fresh bereavement will likely repeat itself, over and over, day after day?  Or should you just tell her that he is at the office?  And is direct lying different from various forms of passive lying -- encouraging delusions, or allowing existing delusions to persist?  What is more important -- dignity or happiness?

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that "in-person socializing and communicating" dropped nearly 15% last year (an average of 31 minutes daily) while computer time (+53.8%), online gaming (+73.3%) and binge-watching (+4.6%) all captured almost 6 times more minutes of a day (178) for the average person in the U.S.  But said Fortune, in writing about a new trend of using social media to promote yourself and that "success and exposure are two sides of the same shiny coin," they add that: ...it's possible the benefits of nonstop social media activity have been overstated...For the vast majority of entrpreneurs, coaches, and consultants, "success is not driven by blasting out your personal life."  So said social media strategist, Sree Sreenivasan: More is not necessarily better.

   So, in the midst of all of this, I heard a plethora of birds this morning, chirping and singing as if spring was just around the corner.  The weather had temporarily turned a bit warmer but not noticeably so; and yet the birds had decided to rejoice despite the snow and ice and January.  It echoed the feelings of author Anne Lamott in an essay she wrote for National Geographic: You would almost have to be nuts to be filled with hope in a world so rife with hunger, hatred, climate change, pollution, and pestilence, let alone the self-destructive or severely annoying behavior of certain people, both famous and just down the hall, none of whom we will name by name.  Yet I have boundless hope, most of the time...Hope is (for me) not usually the religious-looking fingers of light slanting through the clouds, or the lurid sunrise.  It’s more a sturdy garment, like an old chamois shirt: a reminder that I’ve been here before, in circumstances just as frightening, and I came through, and will again.  All I have to do is stay grounded in the truth...I don’t presume to say what capital-T Truth is.  But I do know my truth, and it’s this: Everyone I know, including me, has lived through devastating times at least twice, through seemingly unsurvivable loss.  And yet we have come through because of the love of our closest people, the weird healing properties of time, random benevolence, and, of course, our dogs.  In the essay, she quotes John Lennon in saying: Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end.  And she also adds the words of a priest, one who helped establish Alcoholics Anonymous 80 years ago: Sometimes I have to believe that heaven is just a new pair of glasses. 

   What's real and what isn't real?  And even if we choose to partake in a different world, is it wrong?  Is the world of our dreams any less real than the world of someone with Alzheimer's?  Can we be just as happy in a holographic world as we can in a perhaps hurtful "real" world?  Perhaps I would have never heard the birds singing if I would have had ear buds in and was watching a movie instead of walking the dog but was that any better than the others who chose to do so?  And might it be equally true that life's outlook and life itself is perhaps as easy to change as putting on a new pair of glasses, virtual or not?  Life is moving quickly, and changing quickly, and so are our decisions as to how we will proceed in this adventure...as author Lamott ends her piece: Sometimes hope is a radical act, sometimes a quietly merciful response, sometimes a second wind, or just an increased awareness of goodness and beauty.  Maybe you didn’t get what you prayed for, but what you got instead was waking to the momentousness of life, the power of loving hearts.  You hope to wake up in time to see the dawn, the first light, a Technicolor sunrise, but the early morning instead is cloudy with mist.  Still, as you linger, the ridge stands majestically black against a milky sky.  And if you pay attention, you’ll see the setting of the moon that illumined us all as we slept.  And you see a new day dawn.
 

 *Try to connect these dots: Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Alan Turing.  Still puzzled?  Here are a few more names: Kate Spade, Sylvia Plath and Hunter S. Thompson.  Compressed together, that list along with other names keeps building every 40 seconds as people take their own lives.  In a recent article and partial review of the book on suicide by psychologist Jesse Bering, he noted that while the public tends to blame depression as the leading cause leading to suicide, it actually accounts for just 5%: Around 43% of the variability in suicidal behavior among the general population can be explained by genetics, while the remaining 57 percent is attributable to environmental factors.  Continued the review in Scientific American in quoting Ralph Lewis, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto: At a basic level, we all misattribute the causes of our mental states, for example, attributing our irritability to something someone said, when in fact it's because we're hungry, tired...They say, ‘I don't know what came over me.  I don't know what I was thinking.’  This is why suicide prevention is so important: because people can be very persuasive in arguing why they believe life --their life-- is not worth living.  And yet the situation looks radically different months later, sometimes because of an antidepressant, sometimes because of a change in circumstances, sometimes just a mysterious change of mind.  If you have any such thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

Addendum:  Not sure where to insert this so if you've managed to read this far then my apologies for this totally random addition.  I meant the title of this post to mimic the word virtuoso, defined as someone skilled in a profession (but often limited to those only highly skilled and professional); so it was with some excitement that I nabbed an earlier album at my library sale, one of the virtuoso soprano, Sarah Brightman, singing a variety of mostly unpublished pop songs from her husband and Broadway virtuoso, Andrew Lloyd Webber.  For me, it just didn't work, my unprofessional opinion being that sometimes, despite your successes, you can't be all things or at least good at all things.  Sarah Brightman: beautiful soprano but not so good pop singer; Andrew Lloyd Webber: wonderful Broadway composer but not so good pop song writer...I should note that despite my personal likes and dislikes, the album did quite well.